On the ground with Buen Manejo del Campo

My first field visit was a whirlwind of an experience, through which I was able not only to understand our client’s operations in detail, but also see ICSF’s process and the value we provide to our clients.

The “field visit” is a core piece of ICSF’s process; we conduct both site visits and in-person workshops with our partners in order to analyse on-the-ground operations and develop a strategy and model for scale. Thus, we had traveled to Mexico not only to eat tacos with BMC’s team, but also to learn more about BMC and co-develop a replication model for systematically scaling the social enterprise.

Our first day in Mexico began at a BMC distribution site in Puebla, an agricultural centre outside of Mexico City. It was my seventh day with ICSF and although I had read extensively about BMC and helped to develop materials for our trip, I was still unsure what the next few days had in store.

Upon arrival at the distribution site, we realised that none of the staff spoke English and I would thus be conducting all of the interviews in Spanish. As a brand new analyst this proposed a challenge, but at the same time was an incredibly exciting opportunity. My colleagues Cho and Greg helped guide my questions as I surveyed BMC’s staff about what the company meant to them and what impact it had had on their lives — which, in every case, was substantial.